To Nourish Us
by NotoriouslyN
Summary: Stacker Pentecost returns to London with his daughter.


_**All rights to Guillermo del Toro and Warner Brothers.**_

The teenager at his side hugs a cluster of bluebells to her chest. It had been a year since Stacker Pentecost decided to adopt the only survivor of the Kaiju Onibaba rampage. To this day, he could never truly say what it was that had made him come to care for this girl. He supposed that being diagnosed with terminal cancer had spurred him to take up the responsibilities of parenting. Or perhaps it wasn't the cancer that had made him embrace the idea of being a parent so readily as much as it was the memory of the girl he'd rescued back in Tokyo. The small, tear- streaked smile she had flashed the stranger who stepped out of the Japanese Jaeger, _Coyote Tango_ had never been far from his thoughts.

The little girl in her blue coat and red shoes.

Glancing down at the head of aqua- streaked hair, he knows he had done the right thing when he signed the adoption papers.

Mako Mori's dark eyes met that of her father's, silently asking for permission to lay the flowers on his sister's grave. He nods once before kneeling down himself and placing a bouquet of vibrant gladiolus for the sibling he'd lost during the first Kaiju attack.

London was cold, wet, gray and dreary on the day he learned of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake and the creature that emerged in its wake, the Trespasser. He had been staring out at the blurred watercolors that was the city spread out in front of him with a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc in his hand when the call came in. The multiple calls he'd made to Luna that had went unanswered finally reached her.

His last words to her played vividly in his mind. The wave of relief that swept him at the sound of her voice from across the pond, the exasperation that followed immediately after and the worry that he swiftly tamped down was all still too clear. Years passed but he never stopped berating himself for not making their last conversation count as much as it should have.

_Not if I have anything to say about it. _Those were their parting words. Hers. Of a voice that he'd never hear again.

Stacker takes his daughter's hand in his much larger one as they stand in front of the solid memory of his sister and the aunt that Mako never had the chance to meet. What matters now is that he could last a lifetime on the memory of Luna as the only family he had, and he would do his best to be the family for the girl who'd lost hers.

* * *

It was in him that she found hope. A simple notion that the Kaiju had obliterated when it took away her family, along with the rest of the city. She was down on the street, in the midst of the ruins when she had looked up and saw the man as he emerged. With the sun glinting off his drivesuit, the man atop his Jaeger looked anything but triumphant. Instead his attention and concern was for her, not for the kill. His smile touched her, and in that moment she knew in her heart of hearts that she loved him.

She saw him last in the medical wing at the base, where he'd been there as the doctors checked on her. "My name is Stacker Pentecost." He had said to her, and she told herself she would remember. His name was all she got to remind herself that someone had cared.

Only she didn't thought that he would come back for her. Stacker Pentecost and his dark eyes. Gentle and firm.

She doesn't know who she would've been without him. Without the war to focus on.

Marshal Pentecost's protégé learned to rebuilt herself. In it, she found skills that would kill the monsters. The blood that he wiped from his nose when no one was looking pushed her forward to be the what he no longer could be himself. His strict facade put the steel in her spine and the identical hard glint that she'd seen him wear around the Shatterdome.

"Let me show you London," In his voice, she hears the promise that today there would be no Kaiju coming for them. Not on this side of the Atlantic.

She needs no excuse for the smile that breaks out on her lips. And neither does he.

* * *

Stacker makes sure she sees everything there is to see about London that keeps the tourists coming. He's revisited the places of interest that had in the past appealed to the boy from Tottenham, as it does now to his daughter. For the better part of the afternoon, they've been to places from the Big Ben to the London Zoo, and a smattering of museums. Every so often, she would stop her quick pace and look up at him, questioning him in that curious voice of hers. He doesn't disappoint in telling her what exactly is a quagga to naming each of the cultivated flowers whose red, yellow and purple hues forms a dazzling polychrome of flora.

It is after dinner when they stop for a sweet fix of goat milk ice cream. She insists that her father tries the ice cream too before they take the tube to the Embankment. To the London Eye, an attraction that he has not been on. And as new to him as the Shard had been to Londoners a few years ago when it became part of the city's skyline.

Mako pauses for a moment on the other side of the Thames, gawping up at the huge Ferris wheel for the first time. It rises into the sky, lighting up like some fabulous fairground attraction.

He makes sure that they would not be among those who had been waiting for hours for their ride. A steward has them bypassing the queue, jumping straight to the front after some zigzagging around the maze of metal barriers.

They step into their private glass pod, and her sudden gasp at the view that comes from being suspended high in the sky tells him that this ride is worth it. He tries to not let his own amazement at the twenty- five miles stretch of London view show but she tugs at his hand. She presses her face against the glass wall of the pod and gestures for him to do the same.

He settles for standing close to the curved glass wall while he tucks her close to his side. His Mako has no fear of heights, and he could see that she's trying to take in the world going by in all directions. Gliding high above the River Thames, she jabs a finger to their left, at the historical dome of St Paul's poking out from in between modern office buildings. Stacker trails her finger further that way, to the towering glass edifice of Canary Wharf.

They get a close- up of the clock face of Big Ben and she squeals excitedly. "I want a photo of us."

He smiles obligingly, wanting a visual reminder of their time together in London as much as she does. In the photo that is taken with his phone, the London skyline stretched out over their shoulders. It is breathtakingly beautiful, glittering in the darkness like an eiderdown of multicolored fairy lights.

Thirty minutes later, they come back down to earth. Then he tells her that each of the capsules represents one of the London boroughs.

"Where are you from?" She asks.

"Haringey," He answers, and she hugs him, content with the knowledge of her father's origins.


End file.
